I am a working executive, working long hours and addicted to fast food, usually eating while I'm in the office. I seem to eat whether I'm hungry or not and have got to a stage where I am unable to control my eating habit. Unfortunately, my weight is increasing and I'm being forced to buy clothes a size larger than normal. I can devote a little time to exercise, but is there a recommended safe way to lose weight? I've heard of all these diets, such as Atkins, that don't sound very healthy at all.

This is a fairly common pattern, particularly for executives. I used to be in your exact shoes with this issue.

First- lets get to the underlying reasons.

There are 4 primary causes of this.

1. Eating junk food: Junk food creates out of control cravings for more junk food. It's very similar to how certain drugs create a need for more of the drug. New research shows rich junk food works the same way.

2. Work stress: Work stress depletes serotonin. The body looks to make up for this by opiating on carbs in the evening.

3. Dinner/breakfast imbalance: Usually, what we find with this is you are eating out of control later in the day and less earlier in the day. This creates a pattern that promotes lack of hunger in the morning and gorging toward the evening.

4. Good fats to bad sugars ratio: Good fats promote satiety. Bad sugars promote cravings. Usually with uncontrollable binging there is an imbalance of good fats to bad sugars. Easily fixed.

I'm short for time here so I'll have to write the fix up in another post, but rest assured, there is an easy fix to this. Back in a bit.

That is so funny. Brunis, I was just going to say that Joel would be the best one to answer your question, and before I could type it, he showed up and did. Is he Superman? Joel has written a lot of great articles about exactly what you are asking about (stress, binge eating, effects of junk food on the body, etc.)... and now you have the benefit of his expert opinion to your question. Joel, way to be on top of it.